Has Trump lent a carte blanche to Erdoğan?

U.S. President Donald Trump's enthusiasm to call Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to congratulate him over his referendum victory on day one raised quite many eyebrows in Washington. The usual suspects of the political scene in the U.S. capital immediately started voicing concern that Trump's call gave the stamp of U.S. approval of the referendum result on a silver plate to Erdoğan. 

It is not surprising that the American media jumped on board, bombarding the White House press office and fishing for confirmation that Trump just gave carte blanche to Erdoğan after the latter secured sweeping powers for himself with a narrowly won referendum, (the result of which is rejected by Turkey's main opposition party over claims of manipulations and irregularities). 

The White House has denied that the phone call from Trump to Erdoğan was planned before confirmation of the referendum result. During a gaggle with journalist aboard "Air Force One" en route to Wisconsin on April 18, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders rejected claims that Trump was not concerned about the future of democracy in Turkey as a result of April 16 vote. Furthermore, Sanders made a strong reference to the forthcoming report of the OSCE delegation, which she praised as "having the gold standard" in election monitoring and assessment. 

However, the gist of the matter was never really about Turkey's democratic health for Trump. Sanders confirmed this by stating that "the bigger point and priority of the phone call was to talk about Syria." We already knew from the public statements by both sides that Erdoğan and Trump agreed on holding Bashar al-Assad accountable for using chemical weapons. This gave President Erdoğan an opportunity to raise the bid on...